“Most people are about as aware of their surroundings as a sea cucumber.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“How awful a knowledge of the truth can be.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“There was a pause while Pendergast considered this. “I prefer hypocrisy to poverty.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“My idle curiosity might lead to something more official, if the lieutenant feels his work is being hindered by an officious, small-minded, self-important bureaucrat. Not you, of course. I speak in general terms only.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“What was that line of Sophocles from Oedipus Rex? “How awful a knowledge of the truth can be.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“sometimes not knowing can be a lot worse than knowing—even if knowing proves to be very painful.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“specimens, wait until they’ve been examined, then put them back.” “Bone librarian—a most apt description. How many visiting scientists”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“You just put your boot so far up his ass, he’ll have to eat his dinner with a shoehorn.” “I can always count on you for a suitable bon mot.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“There was a pause while Pendergast considered this. “I prefer hypocrisy to poverty.” “Come to think of it, there is a rationale. Leng didn’t make his money from killing. He made it from speculating in railroads, oil, and precious metals.” Pendergast raised his eyebrows. “I did not know that.” “There is much you still don’t know about him.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“To one side, a vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, polished to a gem-like brilliance, sat on a flatbed trailer, ready to be taken to its new owner. Constance looked from Pendergast to the Rolls and back again. “I really don’t need two, you know,” he said.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“Mrs. Trask turned to him. “When Mr. Pendergast asks for something, we do not say no.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“I like your custom 1911,” the man said, glancing at Pendergast’s weapon. “Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special? Nice-looking piece.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“Hezekiah Pendergast,” Constance continued, “was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius—and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own ‘medicine’: Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“What you’re suggesting is that Hezekiah’s elixir caused epigenetic changes. Such changes can and do get passed down the generations. Environmental poisons are the leading cause of epigenetic changes.”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“words, it gave a rather convincing impression of trying to elude pursuit.” The dry, faintly ironic delivery”
― Douglas Preston, quote from Blue Labyrinth
“I squeezed her hand and said nothing. I knew little about Keats or his poetry, but I thought it possible that in his hopeless situation he would not have wanted to write precisely because he loved her so much. Lately I'd had the idea that Clarissa's interest in these hypothetical letters had something to do with our own situation, and with her conviction that love that did not find its expression in a letter was not perfect. In the months after we'd met, and before we'd bought the apartment, she had written me some beauties, passionately abstract in the ways our love was different from and superior to any that had ever existed. Perhaps that's the essence of a love letter, to celebrate the unique. I had tried to match her, but all that sincerity would permit me were the facts, and they seemed miraculous enough to me: a beautiful woman loved and wanted to be loved by a large, clumsy, balding fellow who could hardly believe his luck.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Enduring Love
“I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales
“We couldn't bring the sheep back to life, so there was nothing for it but to eat the evidence.”
― Karen Maitland, quote from Company of Liars
“The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from The Man Who Would Be King
“I wondered if Tod and I looked as cute together as she and my uncle looked. My opinion was no doubt biased, but I was pretty sure we were damn near lethally adorable.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from With All My Soul
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.